Chris Banyas
Life Editor
Since its formation less than a year ago, the 1901 club has been involved in bringing back the bell to home football games, as well as movements to place the interlocking “I-S” symbol at various sites around campus.
Created by President Tynan O’Neil and Vice President Rachel Bishop, the club has grown to around fifty members.
“We want to tie back to our roots,” said O’Neil. “1901 basically just encompasses all the years that ISU has been here. So Academy of Idaho in 1901, down to Idaho State now and so our goal is to tie back to traditions, to tie back to the traditions of our forefathers, to get more pride in ISU.”
Tied into the ideas of involvement and tradition is the level of school pride present at ISU.
“It stinks that a lot of times the pride of a school lives and dies by the success of its football team, but there are schools that do really well with school pride regardless of a successful football team,” said O’Neil. “And we have a successful football team too, so it definitely helps with our goals.”
Another issue in the minds of the club’s creators is the level of community support of ISU.
“I looked at WinCo last night and they’ve got nuts for sale that are from Boise State and University of Idaho, nothing for ISU. Not a thing in the store,” said O’Neil. “I think in large part stores cater to their market. So if nobody’s buying ISU, why sell it? But apparently people are buying U of I and Boise State.”
O’Neil grew up in Boise and became familiar with the ebbs and flows of school pride before ever coming to Pocatello.
“It was impossible to find anything from Boise State unless you actually went to the university and that was back before they had a successful football team,” said O’Neil.
Another major goal of the club is to ensure that students get more out of the university experience.
“It goes back to the whole goal of wanting people to get more out of this than their education. You can’t go forward unless you know where you came from. Unless you know exactly what ISU’s been through, what ISU used to be,” said O’Neil. “We can’t continue to be ISU because the history is us and so we can’t just forget that.”
The club is in the process of working out a set meeting time, as well as a website to make it easier for students who might be interested to get involved.
As of now, those interested should contact O’Neil by emailing him at ude.usinull@anytieno.
Ideas that are currently being tossed around by the club include putting on a school dance, creating T-shirts and sponsoring a shirt exchange and creating a disc-golf course that would be more centralized than one that currently exists.
